My Tech Musings

This is a definitive how-to (updated) on getting the latest version (v2.40.3, February of 2019) of Netdisco up and running on FreeBSD 12- p3. It’s assumed you have your base system installed, have set your shell and installed sudo or given your account wheel access. To start, we need the following prerequisites installed:

I have seen a lot of posts on the internet showing the best way to get folder redirection working with offline files in Windows 7. Much of it has only sent me down a rabbit hole trying to resolve sync issues for laptop users. Additionally, many posts still reference the Win XP settings (User[and Computer] Configuration/Policies/Administrative Templates/Network/Offline Files) as the best way to get offline files working-but again a rabbit hole is the end result. I’ve even seen some who depart from Group Policy and have opted to run robocopy and mobsync in a logon/logoff scripted fashion. None of which resolved my problem. [Read more…]

As many things have changed from my post I wrote several years ago, here is the updated method for creating a discover cd in Server 2008 R2. Keep in mind that most modern-day systems contain a network card with PXE capabilities, so it will only be on a rare occasion that you would need a discover cd. Requisite to this process is a running Windows Deployment Services with an imaging ecosystem that has been field tested and proven. Additionally, you’ve successfully added network driver packages to your boot images and are familiar with that process. [Read more…]

Contrary to some documentation out there in the internet ethers (how great icacls is compared to its predecessor, cacls), icacls has a serious flaw in bulk processing on server 2008 r2. As a followup to a post I wrote a year ago , I discovered that icacls does not set permissions properly when scripting acl’s in bulk. Here’s my scenario:

Last July I changed employers, and one of my tasks in the past year was to deploy a new file server to replace a very badly configured, poorly deployed virtual machine file server. In addition, I discovered five different naming conventions were used when previous accounts were created in Active Directory. So, to get to a place where I can also prepare for an Exchange migration, I had a lot of account clean up. [Read more…]

On a recent endeavor, I needed to create 1400+ folders on a file share named staffweb (part of our domain migration). Essentially, the permissions on the staffweb folder enable www access to each individual’s published content (via IIS). The server OS which houses the share is Server 08 R2, which was particularly frustrating at first because I could not use the standard xcacls.exe to set the permissions when the folders were created. Where the script worked fine on Server 03, it just wouldn’t work on Server 08. By using a combination of scripts, I accomplished the task, but ironically, I had to break out some old school scripting techniques to set the ACL’s properly. Below are both scripts… [Read more…]

One item of importance for a school district is for folks at schools to be able to publish calendars to the web, either to a blog, wiki, or school site. In my attempt to track down a simple How To on the topic, I did not find the specific steps to accomplishing task, so I have opted to create this one. Keep in mind that this method of publishing calendar content to the web essentially replaces the legacy public folders seen in previous versions of exchange server. As part of this How To, I have added the steps to add designated editors of a shared calendar. These are the steps I followed… [Read more…]

A recent query to the Exchange forums suggested that the documentation from Microsoft regarding Room Resource Policy with Delegates is not complete. Upon further review, I discovered the process is rather simple, but not intuitive nor well documented… [Read more…]

One very important aspect of calendar management is the ability to have globally shared calendar information available for publication to the internet or an intranet. To accomplish this, certain requirements must be met prior to publicly or privately “publishing” shared calendar information. The following are some basics that an Exchange administrator will need to know in order to successfully create publishable calendar content. [Read more…]

Since most of our users at work run on Macintosh, we have them use OWA exclusively. One caveat to doing so revealed a hope-to-be-resolved-soon bug which no doubt other OWA users will observe along the way-a user cannot share their calender with permissions greater than “Reviewer”. The workaround at the moment requires server-side resolution, which from a sysadmin’s perspective, is not welcomed overhead in managing an already expansive system such as Exchange. It is easy enough however, to extend permissions on user’s calendars. The following is an outline to do just that:

I am a huge believer in managing Active Directory from both a centralized and decentralized mode. I work in an environment where we have a 9 to 1 ratio of Macintosh versus PC based systems. We needed to give specific people, specific access to parts of Active Directory so they could essentially fill the role of helpdesk (since this position no longer exists in our department). Without being able to give them an ADUC client (Mac), we needed to come up with another solution. Creating a terminal server with customized MMC’s which launch at login and according to their group is what we were after. The following is the quick and easy setup of such. [Read more…]